The program found that those at risk of psychosis used fewer possessive pronouns when speaking and constructed less coherent sentences.
We learn some words in isolation, in effect as one-word sentences(tt69)
A word is a universal of which the instances are the occasions on which an instance of the word is spoken or heard or written or read(mpd108)
A word may contribute to the significance of a sentence without having any meaning in isolation(mpd119)
The most essential function of words is that primarily through their connection with images, they bring us into touch with what is remote in time or space. The problem of the meaning of words is reduced to the problem of the meaning of images(lk303)
Two instances of the word 'dog' are more alike than two dogs; this is one reason why words help in dealing with universals(lk304)
What we express at first by the one word "hot!" is what we afterwards express by "this is hot" or "I am hot". That is to say, every object-word, in its primitive use, has an implicit egocentricity, which the subsequent development of speech renders explicit(imt127)
Sounds cannot count as words until they have acquired meaning for the child(hk80)
Every word that you can understand must either have a nominal definition in terms of words having ostensive definitions, or must itself have an ostensive definition; and ostensive definitions, as appears from the process by which they are effected, are only possible in relation to events that have occurred to you(hk102)
Words, when learned, can become substitutes for ideas(hk110)
Words and ideas are, in fact, interchangeable; they both have meaning, and both have the same kind of causal relations to what they mean. The difference is that, in the case of words, the relation to what is meant is in the nature of a social convention, and is learned by hearing speech, whereas in the case of ideas the relation is "natural", i.e. it does not depend upon the behavior of other people, but upon intrinsic similarity and (one must suppose) upon physiological processes existing in all human beings(hk111)
The Scholastics say the signification of words are arbitrary but they are settled by reasons(LE279)
Words are just as much reminders for oneself as they are signs for others(LE335)
Nominalism is in essence, perhaps, a protest against a transcendent universe. The nominalist would like to suppress "universals" and keep only the concrete individuals. A transcendent totality is one every combination of whose members determines a further member. Such a universe is worse than infinite: to speak of its cardinal number at all entails revision of the classical infinite arithmetic, since either the number is the highest of all numbers or else parts of the universe have higher cardinal numbers than the whole. If, as is likely, it turns out that fragments of classical mathematics must be sacrificed under all such constructions, still one resort remains to the nominalist: he may undertake to show that those recalcitrant fragments are inessential to science(wp202)
Classes of events which largely did not and will not happen, but which would prompt assent to S if they were to happen, have to be construed as universals(wo34)
Russell early and late has expressly doubted the dispensability of universals. Russell more than once remarked, we should be left with at least one universal, the relation of similarity. I(Willard Quine) think Russell even concedes the Platonists too much; retention of the two-place predicate 'is similar to' is no evidence of assuming a corresponding abstract entity, the similarity relation, as long as that relation is not invoked as a value of a bound variable(tt78)
I(Quine) see no way of meeting the needs of scientific theory, let alone those of everyday discourse, without admitting universals irreducibly into our ontology(tt182)
Quine is a realist of abstract universals for reasons unrelated to nominalism as the impossibility of construing classes as concrete sums or aggregates, and classes are universals(tt184)
Universals may be regarded as entering here merely as a manner of speaking- through the metaphorical use of the identity sign for what is really not identity but sameness of length or notational likeness(flpov118)
The intuitive idea underlying the positing of a realm of universals is merely of positing a reality behind linguistic forms(flpov121)
By treating predicate letters as Variables of quantification we precipitated a torrent of universals against which intuition is powerless. We can no longer see what we are doing, nor where the flood is carrying us. Our precautions against contradictions are ad hoc devices, justified only in so far as they seem to work(flpov123)
The question of 'universals' is not merely one of words, but one which arises through the attempt to state facts(mpd117)
We could imagine a universe consisting only of Alexander or only of Caesar or only of the pair of them. But we cannot imagine a universe consisting only of 'preceded'. It is this sort of thing that has led to belief in substance and to doubt about universals(mpd174)
'Red' is usually regarded as a predicate and as designating a universal. I(Russell) prefer for purposes of philosophical analysis a language in which 'red' is a subject, and, while I should not say that it is a positive error to call it a universal, I should say that calling it so invites confusion(mpd178)
The question whether philosophy must recognize two ultimately distinct kinds of entitles, particulars and universals, turns on the question whether non-relations are of two kinds, subjects and predicates, or rather terms which can only be subjects and terms which may be either subjects or predicates. And this question turns on whether there is an ultimate simple asymmetrical relation which may be called predication, or whether all apparent subject-predicate propositions are to be analyzed into propositions of other forms, which do not require a radical difference of nature between the apparent subject and the apparent predicate(lk109)
The meanings of words are almost all universals(lk156)
If more than one observation is possible, b must be capable of occurring more than once, and cannot therefore be an event, but must have the character of a universal. Language consists of habits, habit involves repetition, and repetition can only be of universals. But in knowledge none of this is necessary, since we use language, and can use it correctly without being aware of the process by which we acquired it(imt312)
There is a valid form of analysis which is not that of whole and part. I(Russell) conclude, therefore, though with hesitation, that there are universals, and not merely general words. Similarity, at least, will have to be admitted; and in that case it seems hardly worth while to adopt elaborate devices for the exclusion of other universals. Complete metaphysical agnosticism is not compatible with the maintenance of linguistic propositions(imt347)
What we learn by perception is always particular, so if we have any universal knowledge, this must, at least in part, be derived from some other source(hk523)
The universe of discourse may conveniently be varied application to application; so formulas are counted valid only if true under all interpretations of 'F', 'G', etc., in all non-empty universes. The empty universe is profitably excepted because some formulas fail for it which hold generally elsewhere. The question whether a formula also holds for the empty universe is easily settled, when desired, by a separate test; for all Boolean equations hold true for the empty universe, and accordingly any truth function of them can be tested by 'evaluation'(slp41)
Interpretation of a formula consists in choosing a universe as range of values of 'x', 'y', etc., choosing truth values for 'p', 'q', etc., choosing specific objects of the universe for any free variables, and deciding what objects (or pairs, etc.) the predicates 'F', 'G', etc., are to be true of. A formula is valid if true under all interpretations with non-empty universes(slp43)
In the empty universe all universal quantifications are there true and all existential ones false(slp43)
We can blithely apply quantification theory without regard to the limits or extravagance of our universe of discourse, but we must take care that something exist in it. A basic technique in quantification theory is transformation of a formula in such a way as to bring all its quantifiers out to the beginning (prenexing) or, alternatively, to drive every quantifier in so that it governs only clauses in which its variable recurs(purifying). The transformations depend on eight familiar equivalences, called the rules of passage. Four of these eight fail for the empty universe(slp278)
What makes ontological questions meaningless when taken absolutely is not universality but circularity(or53)
One can effect the reduction of one ontology to another with help of a proxy function: a function mapping the one universe into part or all of another(or55)
There is more to be said of a theory, ontologically, than just saying what objects, if any, the theory requires; we can also ask what various universes would be severally sufficient. The specific objects required, if any, are the objects common to all those universes(or96)
A valid term schema, then, is one that will come out true of all objects of any chosen universe under all interpretations, within that universe, of its term letters. Such schemata are counted valid when they come out true under all interpretations in all nonempty universes. It is convenient now to make this exception of the empty universe because there are among the Boolean statement schemata, unlike the term schemata, certain ones such as 'backwardsEF V backwardsEFbar' which fail for the empty universe but are valid and useful otherwise(mol115)
The idea of changeable universes goes back to DeMorgan (1846), as does the phrase 'universe of discourse'. Exclusion of the empty universe was implicit already in Gottlob Frege's logic of 1879(mol120)
If we think of the universe as limited to a finite set of objects we can expand existential quantifications into alternations and universal quantifications into conjunctions(mol140)
It thus appears that quantification could be dispensed with altogether in favor of truth functions if we were willing to agree for all purposes on a fixed and finite and listed universe. However, we are unwilling; it is convenient to allow for variations in the choice of universe. This is convenient not only because philosophers disagree regarding the limits of reality, but also because some logical arguments can be simplified by deliberately limiting the universe of discourse to animals or to persons for the space of the problem in hand. For most problems, moreover, the relevant universe comprises objects which we are in no position to list. In many problems, the universe even comprises infinitely many objects; e.g., the integers. Thus it is that quantification is here to stay(mol140)